Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1887-04-22
One of Our Failures.

One of Our Failures.
Those whose experience covered as much
three years of the war, with numerous
bnaicns, had a varied fortune of it.
az saw victory and defeat; they had
(,sure and distress; Us it has been we'll
,hev saw "the best of times and the
rt Of tines" Such, at least, was my
r,rience; and deeming it necessary to
sent the shades, as we'll as the lights, of
%nicture, in order to get a tolerably cor
!, photograph of the war as it was, I will
nlidlv set forth this week an account of
! Of the most absurd and notifying
lures that anywhere happened to the
ion troops.
]le nursery rhyme declares that
he George, with twice ten Thousand men,
reloi up the hill-and thon marched down
again.
md no better-in fact, rather worse
that did some ten thousand troops
o went down to the coast of Texas from
W. Orleans, in September, 1863. They
hi ont after wool, and came back decid-
ysLorn.
Ihe vrivate soldiers keen sense of the
iculous was aroused by the untoward
pnts Of that week, and the following dog
lei, TO the tune of "Few DAYS." was
leh sung about the camps that fall:
We went down to Sabine Pass,
Few days, few days
We went up. like II bag Of gas,
AS We were going home.
HoaUs-We've q homo up yonder, etc.
Sabine Pass! Most notifying are the
collections inspired by the sound! l
her knew or heard of just such another
so during the war as there occurred;
d. indeed, one of that kind was enough
"a very long a
have heard that the great and good
Ferson Davis-the same whom we ar
htly desired to, but did not, chang on q
Fn.apple tree-in his book about the war,
hulses in q good deal of growing over
lat happened to the Yankees down in
h obscure corne Of the Confederacy.
We'll, l should say he has q right to.
III since the war is long over, and every
Ny is happy, there can be no harm in
ling all the details in this affair, as the
Rder will have some trouble to find them
ywhere else.
The locality is the same where occurred
the fall of 1886 a great storm and inun-
tion, with loss of life.
If the reader looks Mt the map he will
+ that it is the southeast corner Of Texas.
be Sabine River is the boundary between
at State and Louisiana. AS it nears the
|llf it broadens into q lake which opens
into a navigable inlet, where there is a
ut house, aud where some defensive
Prhs had been thrown up on the sands. AS
ZEN from the deck of a steamer out in the
|af a couple of miles-and that was as
(ar as got to 1.-THE whole place looked
" and barren, and very sandy. Sabine
~, SO called, situated somewhere about
Pre-, was understood to be n of those
Elsnlhcant little hamlets which ut the
lest and Southwest are always called
fty.~ A current army joke about "Bras-
jar Clty, IN Louisiana, declared that, when
|ere were no soldiers there, it comprised
Pc wharf, the warehouse, four or five
[El Nc houses, q hundred niggers, and O
Flllon mosquitoes"
II In the agreeable lull which followed the
OF Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the
pops had two months rest. That sultry
INNER was no weather for campaigning,
u We Should have been quite willing to
we me vacation extended. But as August
RAet the air was full of rumors of what
ts going to be done. 1t was rather
[aasSs, but no great movement Of our
MES was ever kept quite secret. Some
aes the shrewdness of the soldiers led
em 10 conjecture precisely what was to
attempted; but there we're u%nquestion-
~ cases where there was q "leak" at
So in the first days of that
'peember it was pretty accurately guessed,
i no positively known, that we we're going
before quitting this subject, for lack of
u'ler chance to say them, I will men
u some surprising things showing
" me news came to us in Louisiana.
: usually got it through the enemy's
,es' several days in advance of the
aMer from New York. Sometimes the
was SO surprising that we distrusted
oul 1t usually turned out that the Con-
MI newspapers and pickets told the
~ thus, the news that General Hooker
- III command of the Army Of the Po-
- Wv VI the draft riots in New York,
y ss .le defeat at Fredericksburg, reached
, utse from the enemy. A more astonish-
laet was the following: The disloyal
aaeht IN New Orleans, at least one month
a rsa the e;ent occurred, predicted with
tlec' certainty that General Butler was
W relieved by General Banks. They
s s,e had the news, and when asked where
y ooIained it they would wink and reply,
~, I'm Washington" And they told the
me- Some secession underling in the
~ Vt war Department had stolen the Sc
NV, NJ, ss'huggled itover to his friends ut Rich
w., ana thence it was not long in getting
,iNew Orleans.
r. to return to Sabine Pass.
,s Tue reader will stop to think of tit
,a OF the strangest features of the
& tnaI the State of Texas should from
IN " iast be practically free from inva-
lio r nat vas the largest State, in area,
lnnt aohfederacy; she sent thousands of
MIXERS to the Virginia and Western
p Gpa'gns, and other thousands OF
r refugees were driven beyond
= boluers. Several campaigns against
sh;na ''ltory were planned, besides our
N' lass expedition, but nothing came